My Inner Jock is Winning.

This morning I got back from a grueling boot camp session, downed a delicious Jay Robb Vanilla Protein Shake with some glutamine and frozen blackberries, and went down into the basement to form my daily bicycle plan of attack.

I looked back and forth between the stately and elegant Old Dutch, and my gnarly, battle-weary LeMond Poprad.

Before I knew it, my inner-jock had kicked my inner-fashion-whore in the shins and began to scream, “She’s down! She’s down! Grab the Poprad! Let’s get out of here!!!”

What can I say? I did as I was told.

It was a moment reminiscent of my sixth year on this planet, in which the ballet practice schedule had shifted and suddenly conflicted directly with the soccer practice schedule.

“You’re going to have to choose between ballet and soccer,” my mother explained.

“Mom,” I began, with the patience of a 6 year who could not believe her mother could be so blind, “No one ever cheers for you in ballet. In soccer, when I run down the field, people cheer. That never happens in these leotards. Besides, there’s no mud.”

And that was the end of my ballet career (and probably the beginning of my love affair with mud).

It was all for the best. Ballet leotards are, frankly, hideous at best. (At least ultra-tight cycling kits come on flashy colors with lots of sponsors plastered on them so you feel like a race car.) And the ballet teacher was prone to referencing this very full fishbowl that I was supposedly carrying at my pelvis.

She would scream, “Don’t spill your fishbowl!!”

I was repelled by the fishbowl concept. I imagined the fish flopping wildly as I spilled them and had to work hard to turn off the voice in my head that was screaming back at the instructor, “My fish are DYING! My fish are DYING!!”

I was similarly repelled by her use of the word “pelvis”. The soccer field beckoned, with all its snot-like mud – I answered the call mightily and never once missed that goddam fishbowl.

My fish are no longer dying and this morning I flew like the wind on the beloved and well-abused Poprad.

[...] Veloce Cycles. These retail for $750 new and this particular bike has hardly been ridden at all (this explains a little bit about why). It’s a true tragedy. Take Baby home and set her free! She has a few [...]